They charged into battle together, fighting side-by-side. Whirling through the monsters, they left a path of dust and grime and monster guts in their wake.
"Quick!" He shouted, stabbing a cyclops in the gut. "We have to get to Juniper Anne Marie! To the left!"
The duo turned together, clearing a path to their destination. They reached their friend, hauling her up and carrying her out of the danger zone.
"Wh-what?! Why'd you save me? You guys need to get out of here! They're after demigod blood! They don't even care about mortals like me!" Juniper cried, bouncing up and down on the boy's back.
"Well, genius, that's what I tried to warn you about before you charged headfirst behind enemy lines. They're after demigod blood, yes, and you're a demigod. Really watered down, but there. You gotta remember, we're fighting a war here, so we need to be a bit more careful." Their other companion glanced around, then tugged the boy's arm, pointing to an abandoned building to their left. "We can hide there!"
"What do you mean, Rebecca? I'm no demigod, I don't even have powers! I've got a mortal mom and a mortal dad! How could I be a demigod?!"
Rebecca replied, "You're a great-granddaughter of Apollo on your mom's side, and a fifth-generation Hephaestus kid on your dad's. I don't even know how I know, I just do."
"How? Why? Wait, why am I questioning this? It explains so much! My grandfather was a singer, my mother's a musician, and my dad's whole family was blacksmiths. Actually kinda makes sense, ya know?"
They reached the building, ducking in through a shattered floor-to-ceiling window.
"Let's set up on the tenth floor. I can snipe from up there." Rebecca said, already moving towards the staircase with her modified sniper rifle. "What kind of building is this, Sam?"
"Originally a thirteenth century apartment complex, now an office building for rent with a bookstore on the first floor. Should be a balcony on the seventh floor, as customary. It'd be better to set up there, should be right on top of the monsters. I'll set up traps down here and all along the stairs that'll only hurt monsters. With warnings of course."
"Thanks bro." She paused at the bottom of the stairwell. "Sam, give me Juniper. She still can't walk, with the wound in her leg, and you need to set up the traps. I got a healing kit, I can dress her wound. Hurry!"
He dashed over quickly, helping Juniper transfer as painlessly as possible.
With Juniper now comfortably settled on her back, Rebecca turned back towards the stairs and began to climb, leaving Sam to set up the booby-traps on the first floor.
"Hff, hff, second floor. Hh, c'mon. Third floor. Fourth just ahead, c'mon, pick it up, hff. Fifth. Gotta get up there, hurry, hurry.
Sixth, hff, hff, seventh. Here we go, jackpot." She tried the door, only to find it was "Locked. Gonna have to pick it."
She set Juniper down on the second step, and brought out her tools from the medical kit. She inserted the picks in the lock, wriggling one of them around. Juniper heard a 'click', and Rebecca was picking her up again, the lock sprung.
"We're lucky that Sam's taught me his lock-picking, or we'd be in trouble."
"So, is that something you guys always do? Swap secrets and techniques in case of an apocalypse?" Juniper asked, a little out of breath herself.
"S'pose so. Though we're just friends. Here we go.." She grabbed an office chair, rolling it over near the balcony. Turning around, she eased Juniper into the chair.
"Now, I gotta set up my sniping stuff, so shh with the talky talky."
Rebecca raced around, collecting tools and dragging them out to the balcony. When she was done, she had a mini sniper's nest, complete with a table acting as a cover from any fire from above, a chair dragged up to the edge, and a bowl of chips she found on some poor chap's desk. "Done!"
She grabbed her rifle, putting all the parts together gently and loading in her Celestial Bronze bullets. Climbing onto the backwards chair, she peered through the scope, targeting a Dracaena woman who got a little too close to their hideout.
She aimed, squeezed the trigger slowly, and hit her straight through the head.
Taking aim again, she got three other monsters before missing. "Shit. Miss."
She hit the Cyclops on her second shot, dropping him with a bullet to the eye.
"Stop moving, unless you want me to kill you." Rebecca said calmly, spinning around to aim a modified handgun at Juniper's face.
"How'd you guess, Rebecca? I was hiding it so well."
"Not really. Juniper's hair is two shades darker orange, and her left eye is slightly green, which she hides behind her hair. Your clothes are less dirty then hers by about 10%, and that is not her battle hairstyle. And your defense for being in the middle of the battle was flimsy, because she knew about her heritage. I told her last night in private. You were a pretty good fake, though. Empusa." She cocked the gun, aiming it at the fake's heart.
Just then, Sam came through the door. "Hey, 'Bec, I found somethi- Why are you aiming a gun at Juniper?"
"Empusa."
"Oh." He drew his own gun, aiming it at the imposter's head. He slowly began walking around her, joining Rebecca by the balcony.
"Now, kids, you can put those weapons down, okay? I won't hurt you."
"Charming."
They shot together, obliterating her face and heart at the same time.
"I like your shoelaces." Rebecca said casually, cleaning the monster dirt off her glasses.
"Thanks. I stole them from the president." he replied, shaking his shirt loose of dust.
"Keep watch, I'm'a keep sniping." She went back to her post, and Sam sat in the swivel-chair that fake-Juniper occupied just a minute earlier.
"Count, maybe? I wanna know how many notches to add."
"Five, six, seven, eight."
They sat like that for about an hour, picking off monsters left and right.
They got a call, once, off some guy's cellphone they stole a while ago; it told them to come back to the Empire State Building to help with the final battle.
After, they made their way through the city, picking off anyone and everyone they found that wasn't an ally. The set up shop on the fifty seventh floor of the Building, and stayed there until the fighting stopped, killing almost a hundred monsters.
"What'd you say the total was?"
"You're being modest. The total was one-hundred-ninety-seven."
"197? You sure?"
"Ididic memory. No forgetting."